Little houses and big ideas

Little houses. Big ideas.

﻿A sustainable wooden screen shades the side of the 206 Cordell house, built by Numen Development in 2008.

﻿A sustainable wooden screen shades the side of the 206 Cordell house, built by Numen Development in 2008.

Photo: Hester And Hardaway

Photo: Hester And Hardaway

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﻿A sustainable wooden screen shades the side of the 206 Cordell house, built by Numen Development in 2008.

﻿A sustainable wooden screen shades the side of the 206 Cordell house, built by Numen Development in 2008.

Photo: Hester And Hardaway

Little houses and big ideas

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“We wanted to do affordable housing,” John Walker explained, walking through Numen Development’s first house, the house that serves as a model for everything Walker and his partner, Katie Nichols, hope to accomplish. Made of recycled shipping containers, the house at 206 Cordell, in up-and-coming Brookesmith, is tiny, good-looking and super-sustainable.

And maybe most important, at 1,850 square feet, the three-bedroom, three-bath house is tiny for a new house in Houston.

“By ‘affordable,’ ” said John, “I don’t necessarily mean housing for the poor. I mean houses for people I know.”

How much did this cost to build? I asked, admiring the nifty details. A translucent panel, glowing yellow in the sun, separates the bedroom from the living room. The floor and ceiling heights vary. The master bath’s shower has a glass wall looking onto an outdoor shower — great for the owners’ post-bike rinses or for washing the dog.

Suddenly, John and Katie got quiet. They didn’t want to say what this house cost.

The buyers — friends of Katie’s, a couple with a young son — wanted expensive finishes, Katie explained, things like the gorgeous stripey bamboo floors we were standing on. Katie, a sustainability snob, thought it was wasteful to put bamboo flooring over the perfectly good wood that was already the floor of the shipping container.

OK, I ask. How much would it cost to build a three-bedroom, three-bath house like this one, but stripped down for cost? Without the fancy floors. Not including the land. But with the high-efficiency thermal coating and the nifty high-pressure, low-humidity A/C? With the deck, the big wall-o-glass back windows, and the mother-in-law suite out back?

Katie and John did a quick estimate, trying to figure fluctuating costs like labor and the price of lightly used shipping containers. Somewhere between $125 and $150, they said.

Small houses have long interested architects and eco-activists. But in this bleak economy, their low cost — both to build and to operate — makes them riveting for the average home buyer.

The things that matter

This weekend, when the Rice Design Alliance allows a peek at the Numen house on Cordell Street, house tourists can also study the work-in-progress that shares the house’s cool recycled-glass driveway and double lot. Made from a single shipping container — just one of those big boxes loaded from trains onto 18-wheelers — it’ll soon be a 360-square-foot house for Katie.

The plan slashes the spatial frills she deems wasteful, such as the needless square footage that surrounds most beds. Her own bed will be tucked in a nook not much bigger than it is.

The trick to living in a tiny space, Katie says, is to make room only for the things that matter to you. A bath person, she’ll have a Jacuzzi tub in the sky-lit bathroom.

She’ll have room to cook and serve a dinner for six. She’ll be able to have guests stay with her for up to a week.

Most notably, she’s allowing herself plenty of storage. There’ll be big drawers, designed to contain her 140 pairs of shoes. And there’ll be space, too, to store 50 or so of the wild costumes that she takes every year to Burning Man, that Nevada desert celebration of all things radical and strange. Cruising over the sand in art cars, Katie and her friends need those billowing capes.

It’s a great big life, and she has no intention of downsizing it. But her house: That can be small.